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Risk Worth Taking
Sally's most trusted advisors encouraged her to rethink her trip from Kabul to the school. But she insisted on seeing the faces of the girls: "These students take risks every day just to go to school," she said, "so I am going to take a risk to be there with them."The day after she arrived in Kabul, two vehicles with armed guards set out for the school. The convoy made its way past military checkpoints and into the farming valley of Logar, surrounded by the snowcapped peaks of the Paghman Range.
After an hour, Sally's SUV turned a corner into lush fields that led up to the two-story school perched on a bluff. As it pulled in, Sally heard the sound of girls playing in the courtyard. A cluster of them, from kindergarteners through eighth graders, surrounded her. The girls wore uniforms of black smocks and white head scarves that framed their smiling faces.
The principal, a woman named Shama, stood on the front steps to greet her. Sally and Shama hugged, then Sally was taken away by the students, who wanted to show her all that was going on inside.
A fourth-grade class was reciting lessons in Dari, one of the two official languages spoken in Afghanistan. In another room, students were learning English. And down the hall, girls were furiously practicing handwriting on a blackboard, chalk dust flying.
Sally and Shama walked arm in arm along the school's echoing corridors. Through a translator, Sally asked questions about study plans and class sizes. As an educator, she was in her element. In a quieter moment, a few of the more studious and mature girls were brought to her for a discussion about the school and any worries they had about their safety.
Pashtana, a 14-year-old with a bright face and a quick smile, was old enough to remember when the Taliban was firmly in control and forbade girls to attend school. "It was so boring," she said. "I was angry -- but we were not allowed to be angry. Our parents were afraid for us that the Taliban would beat us or put us in jail."
As Sally prepared to say goodbye, Pashtana and two other laughing girls pulled her into a classroom and painted her hands with henna.
At the front door of the school, an old rusted part from a Soviet tank, which served as a school bell, hung by a frayed rope. The guard, an elderly man with a beard and a face as weathered as his antique Kalashnikov rifle, banged a stone against the hollow metal. The clanging started a thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and a squall of schoolgirls poured out.
The students surrounded Sally, shouting in English, "Goodbye, Miss Sally! Thank you!" One of the girls playfully sneaked up behind her and pulled a blue silk burka over her head. Sally walked among the students in the garment, enjoying her last moments before heading back to Kabul. The girls laughed as she spun in a circle; the sky-blue burka billowed out in the breeze like wings -- exactly what she'd hoped her efforts would give these girls.
When Sally Goodrich returned from Afghanistan, she underwent surgery and chemotherapy for a recurrence of her ovarian cancer. But that, she says, has just made her focus more urgently on her work. "Helping these children gave us our lives back," she says. "I don't know how to thank them."
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